"I will come back?" I asked, shuddering.
"You will come back," the Targa replied.
He was standing erect, a black statue against the wall of gray rock.
"You will come back," he repeated with emphasis. "You are fleeing now, but you are mistaken if you think that you will look at the world with the same eyes as before. Henceforth, one idea, will follow you everywhere you go; and in one year, five, perhaps ten years, you will pass again through the corridor through which you have just come."
"Be still, Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh," said the trembling voice of Tanit-Zerga.
"Be still yourself, miserable little fly," said Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh.
He sneered.
"The little one is afraid because she knows that I tell the truth. She knows the story of Lieutenant Ghiberti."
"Lieutenant Ghiberti?" I said, the sweat standing out on my forehead.
"He was an Italian officer whom I met between Rhât and Rhadamès eight years ago. He did not believe that love of Antinea could make him forget all else that life contained. He tried to escape, and he succeeded. I do not know how, for I did not help him. He went back to his country. But hear what happened: two years later, to the very day, when I was leaving the look-out, I discovered a miserable tattered creature, half dead from hunger and fatigue, searching in vain for the entrance to the northern barrier. It was Lieutenant Ghiberti, come back. He fills niche Number 39 in the red marble hall."